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The biggest surprise in the reading of this week for me was the focus on education in schools,
colleges and most of all; universities. Of course knowledge about countries cannot easily be
improved without education, but almost every sentence of chapter 2, 3 and 4 was about the
education on the US in Europe.
I found it interesting to know that the appeal of this education changed over the years and that the
role of the Americans coming over to Europe changed with this. The feeling that stays with me after
reading the chapters is that the US did not set themselves any restrictions or boundaries to what it
would do to convince Europeans that the way they did it in the US was the right and almost only way.
The amount of money spent on grants for teachers, educational material and visits from American
professors was eye-opening for me. In addition, the amount of scholarships and exchange
programmes was also very high in my point of view. I think that when one country really does things
better than another country people will find out about it and I think the way the US tried to almost
force their views into the schools and universities of Europe is not something the USA should be
proud of. Of course it is a good thing that later on European professors and researchers started
reading, researching and writing about the USA, but writing about your own country as an American
is not preferable I think. In that way you say your way is best and therefore close your eyes for
differences that might be there for a reason and might have something to learn from in it. I did not
recognize many names mentioned in the chapters that I read. I found it hard to focus on the main
trend in the books and research papers mentioned because therewere so many different authors
and origins. And the book wasn͛t always presenting them chronological.
What I also found interesting was the way that Europeans saw/reacted to the immense influence
from the Americans post-war. Some were at first grateful to anything that came from the country
that saved many European countries and their inhabitants from the enemy. But later in time they
understood that the Americans might have some things right but should not be the only nation that
writes about the American point of view. The fact that in Berlin, in the center of Europe, the
Roosevelt Institute was set up is something that the Europeans should be proud of. But on the other
hand they should be attentive and thoughtful about what Americans come and ͚ preach͛ on this and
other institutes in Europe about their own ͚ religion͛ .

The other memory that I have from reading these chapters came from chapter number 3. That
started by noticing that during the first decades of the 20th century there was a great lack of interest
from Europe into America and American studies. In contradiction to the decades that followed as
mentioned in my first memory in this Personal Response Paper, American books were not read allot
and many academics saw the Americans as dull. Even in countries where allot of migrants that went
to the USA came from, where not noticeable for their knowledge about the US. That America
managed to make themselves more interesting for study in Europe is worth a discussion. Because
even that same generation that later on opened to the American influence, read books about travels
to the US that described horrible scenery and people. The change in this view started with literature.
In 1930 Lewis, an á
author won the Nobelprize, a  

 prize.